Anglers along the Eastern coastline have gone ballistic on Facebook after 10 Chinese fishing boats started switching off their tracking devices and entered protected Wild Coast waters on Monday night.
The vessels were accused of darting in to plunder marine protected areas (MPAs) and then off-loading into a massive factory ship anchored far offshore.
The ships’ lights were spotted off Morgan Bay this week.
Screen grabs of the Chinese fleet vanishing from a ship-tracking app were shared hundreds of times and there were curses and wild threats to attack the vessels with RPG rockets and AK-47s.
Using his cellphone app, Maritzburg resident Mark Hicks, saw that from 9pm on Monday until 3am on Tuesday, some of the vessels switched off their automatic identification system (AIM) beacons.
Hicks posted: “Can someone explain to me why, as an armchair warrior with a cellphone and a cheap Android application, I can identify at least half-a-dozen Chinese fishing trawlers that mysteriously disappeared while travelling along our Transkei coast? What are the chances, really, that each and every one of these vessels is not loaded to the hilt with our sardines?”
The national fisheries department did not respond to Daily Dispatch
e-mails yesterday, but the SA Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association posted that the Chinese ships were probably “tuna long-line vessels that are fishing under joint venture arrangements with local rights-holders”.
John Rance, Border Deepsea Angling Association environmental officer said yesterday: “Rumours are they service a mother ship located further out to sea.”
Rance feared that the Chinese vessels were capable of using industrial nets and long-lines.
He said: “They have no business being around here as they don’t have licences and wouldn’t be granted them anyway.”
He said rogue commercial fishing vessels were “notorious. “They just plunder to the point where the resource is finished.”
His association is on high alert.
“The first alert was raised some days ago by a member of the public, Mrs Wendy Pringle, from Morgan Bay, who saw the lights at night.
“From there people tracked their movements via the vessel monitoring system .
“It’s significant their VMS transmitters are all switched off at night until early morning so their activities can’t be logged.”
Rance said all marine protected areas (MPAs) from Port Edward to beyond East London were at risk.
Cameron Johnston, administrator of the Salt Fishing South Africa Facebook page, which has 18000 followers, said their member was tracking the Chinese fleet in Wild Coast MPAs.
“They have been observed moving closer in shore at night and turning off their positioning and tracking systems for prolonged periods. I have no doubt they are up to no good.” KwaZulu-Natal wildlife authority spokesman Musa Mntambo said the vessels were there legally, but were illegally switching off their monitoring instruments.
Mntambo said KZN Ezemvelo Wildlife and the national department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries in Cape Town were investigating the situation. — mikel@dispatch.co.za